Sources of cloud storage

Like many I got the email last week letting me know that as an Amazon Prime member I was now the proud owner of unlimited storage space for photos in Amazon Cloud Drive. That’s actually pretty cool, as I have something like 230GB (gigabytes) of photos in my archive so far.

But that also got me to thinking as to what other cloud storage I actually have available to me.

I decided to make a list.

Dropbox: 20GB – Dropbox includes 2GB for free, but will add storage up to a maximum of 20GB when you refer friends.

Microsoft OneDrive: 1TB – 15GB is included for free, but that becomes a whopping one terabyte – 1024 gigabytes or over a trillion bytes of storage – when you subscribe to Office 365, as I do.

Google Drive: 25GB – 15GB included for free with your Google account. I’ve got another 10GB due to a “QuickOffice promotion” that I don’t even remember. It supposedly expires next October.

Flickr: Unlimited for photos and videos – 1TB is now included with Flickr free accounts. I have an older, no-longer-available Pro account that gives me unlimited storage, among a few other things.

Verizon Cloud: 5GB – included as part of their “More Everything” plan, storage primarily intended for backing up the contents of your phone. Their application will also back up designated folders on your computer.

Amazon Cloud: 5GB/Unlimited/Unlimited/250,000 songs – Amazon’s cloud is actually more complex than they let on. First, everyone with an Amazon account gets 5GB for free. You also get 5GB for your “send to Kindle” documents – non-Kindle books that you’ve emailed to your Kindle account. Then, as they just announced, Amazon Prime members get unlimited storage for photos. Digital music you purchase from Amazon is stored in your cloud without limit. You can also purchase additional storage to upload into the Amazon Cloud Player up to 250,000 songs (I’ve uploaded just shy of 10,000).

Evernote: while not technically cloud storage, I’m a heavy user of Evernote to keep notes and other information archived and with me at all times.

And that’s just me.1 There are plenty of other storage providers out there willing to give you free cloud storage. Using just the providers I use, you can get something close to 40GB general-purpose cloud storage without paying an additional dime. If you already use some of their products, the number can quickly reach terabytes.

Types of cloud storage

Amazon includes 5GB I can use for pretty much anything I want, but the rest is targeted to specific uses: unlimited photos and videos, for example, or music or Kindle books.

Several providers optimize their user interfaces for one purpose or another. Verizon’s is all about backup, as is much of iCloud. Others – such as Google and Microsoft – focus their offerings around document storage from within their applications, even though the storage can also be used for just about anything else.

And some, like Dropbox, are cloud storage as a side-effect of another feature: replicating your data across multiple devices as well as their cloud.

It quickly gets confusing.

Utility of cloud storage

What’s it all good for anyway? I have three broad categories that I think of when I think of cloud storage.

As you might expect, one of the biggest reasons I’m a fan of cloud storage is the opportunity it gives us for quick, seamless and ubiquitous backup of important data.

That’s how I use syncing apps like DropBox. I work on documents stored on my machine, as always, but every time I save the document it’s replicated across all the devices that are hooked up to that same account. Even if there are no other devices, the file is at least replicated up to the DropBox cloud servers. Cheap and easy cloud backup for your most important and current work.

This is also how I make sure my wife’s documents are backed up without her needing to do a thing.

2. Sharing

The second most useful aspect of using cloud storage in my mind is the ability to share something with anyone else. It’s the reason I have a Flickr account: to be able to upload and post in a single location all the photos that I care to share. I can post links, email links and search terms within my own “photostream”, and just about anyone can quickly and easily see my photos.

The same is true for documents and just about anything else I care to upload to any other service. Most all have the ability to make something public and give you a direct link to the item you can share with anyone. Some, like Google Docs, for example, give you the ability to share with specific individuals without needing to make the item publicly accessible to the world.

3. Ubiquity

I was going to call this portability, since in many ways that’s what it is, but I realized that it’s really more than that.

I went through the pain of ripping my CD collection and uploading nearly 10,000 songs specifically so that I would have access to all of my music wherever I was. I can play that music here on my laptop, at my desktop, or out on the road using Amazon’s Cloud Player desktop and mobile applications. All of the music I own is a click or tap or two away, no matter where I happen to be.

Similarly there are a handful of documents that I keep in Google Drive which I edit using online Google applications. That gives me the ability to not only read or “consume” the information wherever I am, but also the ability to update and add to my documents as needed. This is particularly useful for a couple of spreadsheets I use to track things – if I need an update I can quickly open Google Sheets on my mobile phone and make the changes I need.

Risks of cloud storage

The cloud is nothing new. You’ve already been using it for years in the form of perhaps the oldest online service of all: email.

You must secure your account properly. That means good passwords, and making sure your account recovery options are set properly and up-to-date.

You cannot rely on cloud storage as the only place you keep your data. “If it’s in one place it’s not backed up” is still true – even if that one place is in the cloud. Make sure you can recover your data if that cloud service ever goes away.

Only put in the cloud what you are comfortable putting there. If that means unencrypted naked selfies, that’s great – just be prepared should the cloud service itself ever be compromised or hacked.

Encrypt before uploading any data you consider to be sensitive. Like maybe those naked selfies.

Annoyance of cloud storage

As it sits right now I think I have the opportunity to have no less than five different applications on my mobile phone automatically upload every picture I take to their cloud storage.

One is helpful. Five’s just annoying.

And potentially a problem – if I’d said yes to each of them then the amount of data my phone would use would increase five-fold for each photo, and the amount of time it would take would probably be at least five times longer as they all compete for the connection.

Now, I’m all about backing up – you know that. I think the automated upload concept is fantastic. A few minutes after taking a photo with my phone not only is it backed up in cloud storage, but it’s downloaded to my computer ready for me to do whatever I want with it.2

Of course, with the Amazon announcement I went off to download their Cloud Drive app on my Android phone, and what did it assume I wanted it to do? Automatically upload my photos – even though I already had another application (Dropbox) doing that for me. It would have been too easy if not paying careful attention to have both apps – or more – all trying to do it.

That’s … annoying.

Organizing your cloud storage

The real trick to understanding your cloud storage options is to have a plan. My plan’s a little chaotic, since I keep seeing all these new options getting thrown at me and I’m so tempted to try each new one out. 🙂

My plan’s a little skewed from what the “average consumer” might do, since I have resources available to me that most people don’t need.

Here’s how my cloud storage is organized:

My photos are in Flickr. As I mentioned I have a pro account. They have a fine user interface, a very nice presentation of uploaded photos, and I’ve got a bunch out there. It’s my go-to place for uploading photos that I want to share.3 Backup: since these all came from my computer to begin with they’re not the only copy.

My music is in Amazon Cloud Player. As I mentioned earlier, that means I can listen to anything I own anywhere, any time on any device. Any music I purchase on Amazon is automatically placed there as well. (And yes, I’m one of those folks that still believes in buying music.) Backup: I have all the MP3’s I uploaded stored here as well, and automatically download new purchases.

Documents that I want to share, particularly with my assistants, are in Google Drive. I also keep a few documents there so that I can refer to and update them using the mobile app. Backup: manual downloads, once a month or so.

I use Dropbox for some amount of document sharing, including PDFs and related documents I want available on my phone, backing up my wife’s documents, and for sharing additional off-line documents with my assistants. I also let Dropbox own the upload of photos taken by both my phone and my wife’s phone.

I let the Verizon Cloud back up my phone. Not because I have no other backups (I do), but because it’s my hope that should something ever happen to my phone, restoring to a new device from the same provider would be easier (1 click?) using their backup solution. Yes, it does mean that with Dropbox, every photo is getting uploaded at least twice.

All the other services I’ve mentioned I have access to, but use very sparingly mostly because I just don’t need their services at this time.

I will also admit to two other “cloud-like” services that I use that are more a part of my business than anything else:

I use my own servers and bittorrent sync to provide Dropbox-like functionality, but without using someone else’s cloud storage. I provide all the storage, and thus maintain all the privacy. Nonetheless I also use BoxCryptor Classic to encrypt anything even remotely sensitive for storage – even in “my” cloud.

And finally, I use Amazon S3 – their original cloud storage platform – to back up a bunch of things, including all of my photographs.

Whew!

So many options!

With so many options it’s easy to get overwhelmed. I suggest you start small:

Take inventory of what you already have available. You might not realize that you’ve got cloud storage provided by a product or service you already use.

Decide how you want to use it for online backup of important documents, such as I do with DropBox.

Decide how you want to use it for other things, like photos or music, that perhaps you haven’t thought of to date.

Then explore the possibilities. They already seem endless, with more showing up every day.

Footnotes & references

1: And I’m not including the cloud storage I use and have available on the servers that host my websites. I have probably close to half a terabyte available there for general-purpose use.

2: In fact, and completely coincidentally, I did just that while taking a break from writing this article. I took a photo of a machine I’d been repairing to send to its owner. By the time I’d arrived back in my office from the basement, the photo was on my desktop machine where I could quickly edit it and send it along.

About Leo

Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed. After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.

Comments

Your comment about being one of the people who believes in BUYING music made me very happy.

I cannot even count the number of smug people I know acting like they are doing musicians a service by pirating their music. I don’t even understand the logic behind it – they seem to believe that stealing music raises awareness of those artists. In their fantasy world, I guess shoplifting would count as a sale.

All that aside, great article. Cloud storage is everywhere these days, and it pays to put a little thought into how you use it instead of dumping everything into the most recent service you’ve signed up for, only to change it a few months later. That creates nothing but trouble – “did I save that important document here? or there? or….?”

That is just the extra 10 GB which will expire next year. Google Drive should be around for quite a long time more. I never take advantage of these temporary freebies. They are designed to get you hooked on the extra storage and entice you to pay for the extra storage after the promotion runs out.

Windows 8.1 is overly helpful by defaulting a lot of downloads to save to a folder inside OneDrive. At first, I considered this a problem, as I had to look in a few different places to find my downloads. Then when I read that I have a TB of storage with OneDrive, I moved all of my documents folders inside my OneDrive folder. I still use DropBox for my most important files which I use regularly, but it’s good to be able to get at all of my files anywhere I am. Last night I forgot to bring a list of files with me, and I was feeling bad until I realized that I could view that list on my phone by using the OneDrive app. I’m even considering moving my DropBox folder inside the OneDrive folder. Not so much for backup purposes (I have a lot of backups), but to have all of my data in one place for easy access. This is all in the beta stages now.

Hi Leo, I need more control of what is being backed up. I have Adobe PSE 10 on a DVD.
I also MS visual suite 2010 on DVD. These have been installed. I have 2 full images
of this computer. I don’t collect music. My photos are backed up to DVD. There are six
different backup programs. I like Megrim Reflect and I believe in backups. Do you have
a book about backing up that will show me how to control what is being backed up.
Thanks Esley

I assume you mean Macrium (never heard of a “Megrim”). No, my books focus on backing up EVERYTHING, which is what 99% of people should be doing. Most backup programs – including Macrium, I believe – will let you elect to do a files-and-folders backup of selected folders, but I’ve not written that up.

In the grand tradition of people failing to understand the necessity of being backed up in at least two locations, there are an awful lot of people out there not the least bit worried about losing their data because they’re using “the cloud” to back up. They continue not to grasp that having their data backed up ONLY to the cloud is a very good way to end up losing it someday. For the life of me, I simply cannot understand why people have trouble grasping the very simple fact that unless your data is stored in at least two locations or on at least two devices, you are NOT backed up.

I’ve been online for more than a decade. I’ve 3 personal mails plus one at Office. I’ve bank accounts online, and make online purchases too. However, I don’t feel like backing up any of mine even after reading about woes of the hacked accounts. It’s not that nothing will happen to my accounts, but simply because I don’t expect anything substantially bad if all my data/contacts is lost. I don’t have photos or any important virtual data to hold on to.

Am I missing something, the potential difficulties? Responses from others are welcome too.